In my previous post I talked about the women's pro football matchup that we got to go out and photograph with long-time newpaper and magazine photographer Scott Robinson.

Last night he posted on his blog some of my photos from that game and his commentary on them.

Thanks again to Scott for the opportunity and for the nice words in his blog!

Scott's blog: The Picture Coach

One evening at this field that rests in the shadows of FedEx Field, the large stadium the Washington Redskins call home, watching the DC Divas play football would forever change the meaning of this entries' title, "You Hit Like a Girl".

The DC Divas are Washington DC's professional women's football team. That's right. WOMEN'S professional football. And this isn't tag football, touch football, flag football or any other football than, well, football.

I received an email late last week from Scott Robinson, a long time newspaper and magazine photographer based in DC. He has shot at most major sporting events as well as done editorial portraits for the likes of John McCain, Quincy Jones and Stephen Spielberg. He received my name from my former photojournalism teacher Charles, for whom I had done my 'Friday Night Lights' high school football project.

Scott was looking for a few people to be his 'students' for a new educational video he is doing in conjunction with Nikon. So Meghan and I both were able to go out to the field with him to shoot from the sidelines and be videotaped for the project.

Getting to the field the teams were both out warming up and doing drills in preparation for their game. And it wasn't any game, it was the playoffs to get into the season finals in Maryland next weekend. My first impression was the shear size of the team. From a distance you would be hard pressed to think this was anything but a men's pro team. These women mean business.

Play was brisk, tough and emotional. They all recognized that this game meant going to the final. Focus on the sidelines was intense and even more so on the field.

In the end the Divas took the game 27-17 and will square off against Boston next weekend for the title.

For us the opportunity was great to shoot from the sidelines and capture this lesser known sporting event.

See a full gallery of images from the game.

Okay, I'll leave the hard sell behind.

I am offering a gallery of select images from the France gallery for sale as prints. Feel free to forward to your friends and family or anyone who may be interested in them.  If there was one from the gallery that you don't see in the store that you were interested in, just email me.

To visit the store, go to www.jhmatthews.com, in the box in the bottom left corner enter the event code: 109832WFRANCE. I know the event code is annoying, but I can't control that.

I really enjoyed our days in France. Paris amazed me much more than I thought it would. It is a wonderful city. But I always enjoy being mobile, and the many days we spent driving through the French countryside, through vineyards in Burgundy and to castles in the Loire Valley to the fortress at Carcassone, were great.

Highlights to me were:

• Being at the Eiffel Tower at dusk as the lights came on
• Tracing the footsteps of Vincent Van Gogh and seeing the sights he painted
• Several wonderful days with my great friend Pascale and her family
• Walking along Omaha Beach only a few weeks before the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landing on that very sand
• Approaching Mont Saint-Michel at sunset

It is back to reality here now. I have a possible shoot for another band which would be great. I'm also registering to try to have a booth at Art On The Avenue in Alexandria, VA, in the fall as I did a few years ago with a friend, but this year I'll be flying solo with my own booth! I'll post info if I get in so anyone local can come by and say hello.

We had a great time in France. After getting home on Monday I've been going through photographs to get a gallery online and finally have one ready. I have already reduced it in size since I doubted people wanted to look through 250+ photos! It is still hefty at 166, but I may still pull more images over time.

I tried to give relative captions to at least give enough information for people to Google or Wikipedia places and sights if they wish to learn more.

In the next few weeks I'll probably post a link to a gallery for prints sales of select images from France as well.

Here it is:  www.jhmatthews.com/france

The gallery doesn't have any means for commenting, but if you see something you especially like, feel free to post a comment back to this blog posting.

I'll also be linking the gallery off of my Facebook profile.

Thanks for looking!

John

We have been through so much of France so far, and still a bit to go. We spent a few great days with our good friend Pascale and her wonderful family, Phillipe and Yoann, in their village in the southwest of France, less than a hour from Spain in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains.

Early in the morning on June 6, 1944, American, British and Canadian forces invaded the German occupied France via the English Channel, landing along the beaches of Normandy. Omaha Beach has become the centerpiece of this historic day, though the events at Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches are no less important.

The Eiffel Tower at dusk. 

There are no lights. There are no scoreboards. And no huge salaries.

But there are twenty-two determined players with the dream of making contact with that small white ball and sending it flying into the outfield.

But mainly they just want to run to the ice cream truck every time it drives by.

And it drives by a lot.

Saturday marked the beginning of the Spring season for Youth Baseball and my first 'sponsorship' of a team. Two teams, actually. My name is filling the shoulders for a t-ball team and a coach pitch team.

These are the youngest of the youngest. Five and six years old. They don't even keep score, officially at least. You do hear the kids talking about how many runs they have compared to the opposing teams.

I'm out there photographing the fast-paced action, documenting hits and runs and the occasional nap time in the outfield. I will be shooting through the season then uploading images to secure websites for each team where the parents will be able to peruse the selections, then hopefully add many of them to their shopping carts and ordering prints, trading cards and more.

And it is just cool too see my name on the backs of all those little shirts.

Well, if the 'man' is me, then yes. It's been a few months of self-employment so far and things have been staying fairly busy with a combination of photography and web development/design work.

In a couple of weeks I'll start an all new project: kids sports. Through a new contact I have become a sponsor of the Chantilly Youth Association who produce the t-ball and little league events for kids in Chantilly, Virginia. From what I hear, I actually have my name on the back of a teams jerseys as a sponsor, I cannot wait to see that! I will be the sports photographer for the leagues. Another company does the 'set' shots, of each kid smiling with their bat on home plate and the full team shots. I will be getting out there to get images of the kids swinging the bat, running the bases, and all of that fun stuff, then putting the images out for parents to buy.

In preparation for photographing 21 teams over the course of their summer season, I had to find a new resource for selling prints to proud parents. As much as I would have liked to build something myself, it seemed much more rational to find a third-party provider. I have signed up with Millers Labs out of Kansas, a national leader in photographic printing. They have a great tool that allows me to create dozens of different online 'stores' for photos, one for each team I'll be photographing.

To test the system, and since I'm paying for it, I thought I would set up a special gallery with images for sale as well. I quickly grabbed ten of my favorites from our travels, including Ireland, Italy and Greece, and will be getting more online soon.

You can find that gallery here: http://www.millersalbums.com/?event=109832W0409. Simply sign up using only your email address, then you can log on with that email address at any time. This is not a replacement for my website at all, this is just for print sales.

So, hopefully I won't go another three months before posting again. Between the new sports photography and our upcoming journey to France, I should have more to write about! I also have a new online photography related project I am working on and will show off on here in the coming months.

Tomorrow is a huge day for America. It is also a huge day for Washington DC. Four million spectators are expected to crowd into the city to try to catch a glimpse of the new President. The Metro system saw their highest ever rider count yesterday, two days before Inauguration Day, so the system will truly be put to its test in the morning. The Memorial Bridge is closed to cars, only pedestrians and Metro buses will be allowed, that goes for the 14th Street bridge as well. 10,000 buses are expected to pack the streets with private tour groups and authorized groups for the parage and other events.

Cellphone service will be maxed out. In this age when you can't turn around without bumping into someone texting their spouse, emailing their work or checking movie times on their cellphones, you can bet a good number of those four million people are going to be trying to call their familes across the country to say "hey, guess where I am!" or "I just totally think I maybe saw Miley Cyrus come out of a Starbucks!".

Tomorrow, I will sit in my living room watching the events in the warm safety of my home, enjoying the moment that Barack Obama is sworn in as our 44th President, and hoping all the while that everything goes smoothly in the nation's capital.